Can it be? Is the long national nightmare coming to a close? What sea-change happened to deliver us from this horror? 
Oh, like the Boy Band era was so much better.
It’s because kids these days aren’t hard anymore. They’re too busy listening to Emo crap about getting beaten up by jocks and teased by cheerleaders.
I would say this might just be another example of online a la carte music purchases damaging record sales. It might be more hip-hop fans are buying their music online than in previous years. Internet access is probably in homes today that just five years ago it would’ve been seen as an unnecessary and frivolous expense.
Plus, the Emo thing. 
It only took seventeen years for Vanilla Ice to kill rap.
I think the gangsta thing is finally getting stale. Rap and hip hop aren’t going away, but in a couple of years gangsta rap is going to be looked at the same way hair metal is looked at today–an example of the excess and artistic bankruptcy of its era.
“It was Beauty that killed the Beast”.
So what sales are up anyway? What is the next big thing in music?
BTW: Was rap as bad as disco? I know I disliked disco even more. I am still waiting for some new group to change music like the Beatles or Floyd or Zeppelin did.
Jim
Ummm…Gangsta Rap hasn’t been around really since the late 90s.
Jay Z doesn’t rap about Aks and drive bys… He raps about Bentley’s and suits.
That article is terrible. I’m surprised it’s an AP article and not an editorial by some reactionary idiot. This is the worst part:
(bolding mine)
What the fuck? Why on earth does this writer feel the need to point out that the guy being quoted is black?
Here’s another gem:
That stuff didn’t enter hip-hop until the 80’s. This writer doesn’t know what he/she is talking about.
I do agree with a lot of the criticisms leveled against certain segments of hip-hop culture.
I found a recent interview with Chuck D (from Public Enemy) in which he discusses, among other things, the problems with hip-hop today. I think a lot of you will agree with what he says:
Kids don’t like rap music so much as they like whatever pisses their parents off the most. Rap music does that on *so *many levels.
Maybe the infinite number of monkeys typing rap “lyrics” on the infinite number of typewriters have finally started to repeat themselves.
Or just that yesterday’s underground music is today’s popular music is tomorrow’s old people’s music. Though somehow I can’t picture Flava Flav playing Vegas to blue hairs…
Now I have Starlight Express’s “Light At The End Of The Tunnel” in my head:
There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
Though the inside might
Be as black at the night
At the end of the tunnel there’s a light.
I think I’ll wait for a source other than Fox News before I think too hard about this.
Forget Rap, the most heinous crime against music is the Lloyd-Webber “musical”.
How about Yahoo News?
Or the San Diego Union?
It’s a story on the AP wire. FOX just had the easiest link to it. So start thinking.
Not liking “rap” is to me like not liking “rock” or “gospel” or any broad term to describe a wide range of art and artists. There are so many sub catagories out there - Freddy Mercury vs. Ozzie Osborne or Phil Collins or ToTo. All rock and all different.
Talib Kwali vs. The Ying Yang Twins or CeeLo (of late part of Gnarls Barkley) or Jay Z. All rap and all different.
The Charlie Daniels Band plays different “gospel” than Mary Mary and they don’t sound anything like Petra.
I like a lot of rap - I’m 49 and came up with the Motown sound - there are some songs that I don’t like at all but there are excellent writers out there - excellent MCs - they’re just not heard on mainstream radio.
I don’t care who announced it, the party is one here!
So? I don’t like country or folk or disco either. I have no problem not liking a wide range of artists.
1964 - The Beatles played the Ed Sullivan show and rock 'n roll was officially here to stay. Grandparents rolled violently in their graves and curmedgeonly white guys over the age of 35 torqued themselves into steaming piles of disgust, predicting the end of society as we know it. Twenty-eight years later it was 1992 and rock and roll was being played at political rallies. There was not a single person left on the planet who felt threatened by it.
1979 - The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” is a mainstream radio hit. Rap and Hip Hop become well known terms. Grandparents rolled violently in their graves and curmedgeonly white guys over the age of 35 torqued themselves into steaming piles of disgust, predicting the end of society as we know it. Twenty-eight years later it’s 2007 and curmudgeonly old white guys still jump on every chance to insult hip-hop, including putting quotations around the word “music” when speaking of it, and thinking of new and clever ways to subtley attack its quality, by saying things such as, “Rap? More like Crap!”
Conclusion: People hate rap because it’s made by black people.